Wednesday, 23 May 2012

Cobolt FM adds sleep timer

Update 1: CoboltFM and KLastFM are dead.
Last.fm changed things for the worse and pulled the plug on free
streaming for almost everyone. Believe it or not, most of the planet
can't stream anymore even if they pay. Last.fm refugees can still
stream custom radio stations from Grooveshark with Dood's Music Streamer.

Cobolt FM plays last.fm radio on your Android phone without the geographical restrictions of the official last.fm app. Cobolt FM works for non-subscribers too.

It precaches songs for almost gapless playback, has a button for one-tap access to your last.fm page, and now it has a sleep timer too.

Unfortunately the sleep timer is buried at the bottom of the settings screen. And that's not the only shortcoming of the user interface. The design of the app is a work in progress, future updates should improve its look and feel.

Competing last.fm player KLastFM looks a little better. But only with an ad blocker like AdAway, because the ad banner is really ugly. It sits very close to the playback controls. So close that it makes you wonder if it's deliberately set up to encourage accidental taps. And KLastFM doesn't have a sleeptimer (yet).

Update 1: CoboltFM and KLastFM are dead.
Last.fm changed things for the worse and pulled the plug on free
streaming for almost everyone. Believe it or not, most of the planet
can't stream anymore even if they pay. Last.fm refugees can still
stream custom radio stations from Grooveshark with Dood's Music Streamer.